Matthieu Rey (CNRS, IFAS-Research), Sophie Dulucq (IFAS-Research), and Noor Nieftagodien (Wits History Workshop, University the Witwatersrand) are currently preparing the co-edition of a special issue devoted to the history of urban cultures in Southern Africa (19th-20th centuries) for the Revue d’Histoire contemporaine de l’Afrique. This volume will gather papers insisting on the relationships between a specific place and stage – cities and towns – and the cultural […]
African views on Covid-19. Call for papers (Deadline: July 20, 2020) African Views on Covid-19 is a title of a project book that aims to document the ways Africans have faced, or are still facing, the current health crisis, from the perspective of humanities and social sciences. This collective, multidisciplinary, bilingual (French and English) publication has […]
La toute nouvelle revue Sources. Matériaux & terrains en études africaines, interdisciplinaire, multilingue et en accès ouvert, est le fruit des efforts conjoints des UMIFRE sub-sahariennes (CEDEJ-Khartoum, IFRA-Nairobi, IFAS-Research, IFRA-Ibadan, CFEE, SFDAS), du laboratoire de recherche LAM (Les Afriques dans le monde), à Bordeaux, et d’une solide équipe internationale en Sciences Humaines et Sociales. Sources. Matériaux & Terrains en études africaines se donne une […]
A number of pandemics and epidemics have afflicted the African continent for centuries. Health historians have researched these issues belonging to the field of social and economic history. We have selected two papers focusing on the history of the plague in West Africa from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century and on the Spanish flu […]
Edited by Claire Benit-Gbaffou, Sarah Charlton, Sophie Didier, Kirsten Dörmann Wits University Press, 2019, 432 p. (with the support of IFAS-Research) Yeoville Studio was a research and learning initiative driven by a collaboration between the Wits School of Architecture and Planning and several community partners in Yeoville, Johannesburg. It ran from 2010 to 2012 and aimed to produce […]
How a People’s Science Helped End an Epidemic is the title of a recent book dedicated to the role played by social scientists in the fight against the last great epidemic in Africa. Leslie Bank, a professor of social anthropology at Walter Sisulu University (Mthatha, South Africa), supports the idea that social sciences are an important […]
Since the beginning of the epidemic, implementing lockdown and ‘social distancing’ seems to be a real challenge in the economic and social context of South African townships. The outright imitation of measures taken elsewhere (China, Korea, European countries…) raises insoluble problems in the country’s poorest neighbourhoods. Godfrey Maringira pleads for a different approach : more […]
« Do you also think of any optimistic scenario ? » Asked this very question in a meeting about Angola’s situation during the pandemic, Chloe Buire, a French geographer, offers some thoughts in her scientific blog, Luanda Micro Lab. As a specialist of Angolan urban society, and of Angolan citizens’ mobilisation and empowerment, she reflects on the tools available […]
Chloé Buire is a researcher at the CNRS (Centre national de la Recherche scientifique — the main French Research agency). She is a geographer and an urban anthropologist. Affiliated to IFAS-Research, she is based in Angola and her research themes revolve around Angolan civil society’s mobilization and empowerment. She is currently living in downtown Luanda. A lockdown has been implemented in Angola at the end […]
Thomas Beard is a Master of Science candidate in the Department of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Sciences (University of the Witwatersrand) and a specialist of geoarchaeology. His research themes focus on fabric and spatial analysis. He shares his reflections on the lockdown in South Africa from Johannesburg. Just before the lockdown, the excavation team was […]
